Variety Cuts Its Life’s Blood: Critics McCarthy and Rooney

At Saturday’s HBO Oscar party, I enjoyed dishing about the upcoming Cannes line-up with Todd McCarthy, Variety’s long-time film critic, who is the paper’s biggest star and the main reason readers all over the world read the august trade. His reviews post first, and are the best read thing in the paper, bar none. The day after the Oscars, publisher Neil Stiles confirms that as a cost-cutting measure, film critics Todd McCarthy and Derek Elley and theater critic David Rooney are out, set loose as freelance contributors.

UPDATE: The LAT reports that TV critic Brian Lowry will stay on. And features editor Sharon Swart—who knows the indie community as well as anyone—was also among about eight staffers shown the door this morning. Variety poached her from the Hollywood Reporter twelve years ago. Copy editors Carmel Dagan, Matt Coltrin and Gary North and paginator Danielle Grimes are also cut. Editor Tim Gray’s internal memo urges his staffers to “ignore the bloggers” (full memo pasted on the jump).

Variety can’t afford them, as they couldn’t afford me or editors Michael Speier and Kathy Lyford. But I was a relative newbie, a columnist/blogger. I was a luxury. Problem is, I was well-paid, as were McCarthy and Rooney. Nonetheless, they are necessities. Without them, Variety is doomed. Along with the badly handled recent fracas over Robert Koehler’s review of Iron Cross (which was pulled off the site during a robust Oscar campaign, then later restored) this sends a dubious message to Hollywood: Variety is running out of cash. As vet journalist Chris Willman tweeted me today: “this feels like end of the world as we know it. I can’t even comprehend.”

At the Oscars last night, things weren’t going well for Variety. IndieWIRE had laid out several hundred bucks for my secure, fast DSL line, which I shared with Variety, as their air cards were going in and out. IndieWIRE sent out swift news alerts and scored huge traffic with its live Oscar blog, reminding readers to tune in with tweets. Variety barely got the final news alert out, and didn’t have Oscar winners posted on its front page. Variety stalwarts Cynthia Littleton and Tim Gray were tweeting from backstage and the Kodak—going in, neither had as much as 100 followers.

I saw it coming. When I left The Hollywood Reporter (which gave me the opportunity to launch the Riskybiz blog, and had already been through several Draconian staff and expense trims) to move to number-one trade Variety, I saw a bigger, fatter, more spendthrift organization accustomed to riding high off the hog. And I saw a trade that was neither in tune with its customers, nor with changing times on the web. Layoffs eventually came. And keep coming. (Here’s Variety’s official management reorganization story, with no mention of staff trims.)

But former editor-in-chief Peter Bart had built a respected news organization with a strong staff—and he saw the wisdom of deploying top critics all over the world. That was the center of Variety’s long-range success. It made the paper a global industry must-read. Erudite and learned about cinema, Todd McCarthy gets more hits for his reviews than anyone at the paper.

Wait. Variety is behind a pay wall. They don’t care about hits anymore. Don’t they care about premium content? They also lost star news hound Michael Fleming to Deadline Hollywood, which is stealing more readers by the day. Fleming probably saw that he too, was overpaid. And he didn’t want to be rendered invisible. Too bad Variety couldn’t have instituted across-the-board pay cuts for everyone—and saved some jobs and talent. Oh wait. The people at the top would have to cut their salaries too. And what about that giant red Variety logo on top of their Wilshire office tower? How many salaries a year would that cover?

While this change brings opportunity for two talented, less expensive younger staff critics trained by McCarthy—Justin Chang and Peter Debruge—McCarthy and Rooney’s departure marks a sad, sad day. (UPDATE: Monday afternoon, @ebertchicago tweets: Variety fires Todd McCarthy and I cancel my subscription. He was my reason to read the paper. @AskDebruge responds: We’ll have to earn you back. And David Poland says: RIP Variety.)